[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":791},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/dotfiles-document-and-automate-your-macbook-setup":3,"navigation-en-us":37,"banner-en-us":437,"footer-en-us":447,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Michael Friedrich":688,"blog-related-posts-en-us-dotfiles-document-and-automate-your-macbook-setup":702,"assessment-promotions-en-us":742,"next-steps-en-us":781},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":25,"isFeatured":12,"meta":26,"navigation":27,"path":28,"publishedDate":20,"seo":29,"stem":33,"tagSlugs":34,"__hash__":36},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/dotfiles-document-and-automate-your-macbook-setup.yml","Dotfiles Document And Automate Your Macbook Setup",[7],"michael-friedrich",null,"unfiltered",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"dotfiles-document-and-automate-your-macbook-setup",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"dotfiles - Document and automate your Macbook setup","Document and automate your Macbook setup with installing tools and well-known configuration settings. Follow best practices from a developer’s point of view.",[18],"Michael Friedrich","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749664102/Blog/Hero%20Images/gitlab-values-cover.png","2020-04-17","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\n## What are dotfiles?\n\nWhat are dotfiles? Put simply, a dotfile is a file that starts with a dot (.), which differentiates it from other file types. Beyond that, a dotfile is a way for software developers to be more productive. Dotfiles are configuration files that help a variety of programs manage their functionality. Dotfiles are hidden by default in a Unix-based system.\nDotfiles can be used to set environment variables, define shell aliases, configure editors and other command-line tools, and much more. They are typically stored in the home directory of a user and are loaded when the user logs in, or when a new shell is opened.\n\nSome examples of dotfiles you may have encountered before (or not) include:\n\n* .vimrc\n* .bash_profile or .bashrc * .config\n* .gitconfig\n* .zshrc\n\n## Why use dotfiles?\n\nWhy use dotfiles? When I first started working on Windows, Linux and macOS many years ago, there was this steep learning curve. Not everything on the system had a good default for improved productivity, often tools were missing to create your own work environment.\n\nAt first glance, I started writing blog posts and shared my findings with everyone. This had the benefit that I exactly knew where these snippets can be found. Many years ago, systems were not so reliable and often a full operating system reinstall worked better than troubleshooting existing problems.\n\nAfter some years, many best practices had been documented in blog posts and were hard to apply in one go. Especially with working in many areas for development, professional services, ops and support, different settings and tools have been applied. At that point I had created a wiki page with text and screenshots.\n\nThe wiki page allowed for many revisions, and was kept in the internal Confluence since it contained company sensitive information. I often was asked how my Linux and macOS setup looks like and if I could share best practices.\n\nThen I learned that users share their configuration and setup commands in a Git repository which is called “dotfiles”. At first glance, a dotfile is a hidden file on a Linux/Unix system, containing tool specific settings. Common tools are Git, vim, bash storing their configuration in a dotfile in the user’s home directory.\nThese dotfiles were enriched with scripts to install additional software via package managers, and to apply certain runtime configuration after the work environment was setup the first time.\n\n## dotfiles on my Macbook\n\nMy first steps with dotfiles started at the point where updating the Confluence wiki became troublesome. It also was the only left bastion where I could not write documentation in Markdown. Within the dotfiles Git repository, best practice always has been a `README.md` file which describes more details and tips. Copying snippets and scripts for everyone also has become easier. Users can even fork the repository and use this as a basis for their own work environments.\n\nNavigate into my [dotfiles repository](https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/dotfiles) to learn more. The following sections highlight some of my daily best practices as a Developer Evangelist at GitLab.\n\n\n### ZSH with OhMyZSH\n\nmacOS Catalina uses ZSH by default. Therefore I was looking into best practices and soon learned about OhMyZSH as shell framework. It comes with nice plugins which provide a native Git shell integration as well as exporting credentials as environment variables.\n\nIn addition to the built-in functionality, it is easy to add custom aliases and settings. Avoid clutter inside the main `.zshrc` file, instead extend `.oh-my-zsh/custom/aliases.zsh` for example. The following alias allows to clean up the local git branches very easily:\n\n```sh\n# Delete all remote tracking Git branches where the upstream branch has been deleted\nalias git_prune=\"git fetch --prune && git branch -vv | grep 'origin/.*: gone]' | awk '{print \\$1}' | xargs git branch -d\"\n```\n### Git configuration\n\nMy Git configuration is rather simple. The reason I keep it inside the dotfiles repository is that I always forget about the Git CLI commands to set them properly. Over the years, all my preferred customizations have been applied in Git itself. The only minimalistic addons are a custom `git log` command and the credential helper setting. I need that for storing the GitLab personal token and not being asked by `git push/pull` all the time.\n\n```sh\n$ cat ~/.gitconfig\n\n[user]\n\tname = Michael Friedrich\n\temail = mfriedrich@gitlab.com\n        signingkey = D14A1F16\n[alias]\n        l  = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset %C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)\u003C%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative --\n[credential]\n\thelper = osxkeychain\n```\n\nThe Git shell prompt integration is done with OhMyZSH as plugin. Previously I had done this with a customized Bash profile. I decided to go for ZSH with macOS Catalina and my new job at GitLab.\n### vim configuration\n\nEven with habits changed to using VS Code/Atom or the Web IDE, I am still very fast with vim, especially with spell checking included. I've been carrying this `.vimrc` file around for more than 10 years now and it always helped :) Here is the best of - there is more inside with syntax highlighting and restoring the cursor on re-open.\n\n\n```sh\nset viminfo='20,\u003C1000,s1000,:20,%,n~/.viminfo “ Increase buffer size for search\nset history=50            \" keep 50 lines of command line history\nset ruler                      \" show the cursor position all the time\nset nofixeol                 \" don't fix end-of-line errors\n\"set background=dark\nset background=light\nset showcmd              \" Show (partial) command in status line.\nset showmatch           \" Show matching brackets.\n```\n\n\n### Install favorite software and tools\n\nHomebrew is my favorite package manager on macOS. It ranges from adding simple tools like “htop” to applications not available in the app store like “Gimp”.\n\nIn order to keep things simple, the `brew_once.sh` script takes care of installing Homebrew, enabling the cask system for applications and installs wget/curl to setup OhMyZsh.\n\n```sh\n./brew_once.sh\n```\n\nAdditional software is installed with the “`brew.sh` script. This can be re-run any time to ensure the same state is applied. This will be useful if an application was accidentally removed. Please fork the repository and adjust everything for your likings!\n\n```sh\n./brew.sh\n```\n\nThe script takes care of installing the following:\n\n* GNU utils (sed, awk, tar, sha256sum). The macOS utils differ a bit and may break scripts made for Linux.\n* System tools (htop, pidof, pstree, grep, screen, nmap, ssh-copy-id, tree)\n* Images (imagemagick) for easy conversions\n* Archive and Git (git, git-lfs, p7zip, xz, tig, hub)\n* JSON (jq, jo)\n* Development (Ruby, Python, Go, Redis)\n* Applications as cask (Java, Atom, VS Code, Firefox, VLC, Gimp, Vagrant)\n\n\n### Enhanced Workflows with Alfred\n\n[Alfred](https://www.alfredapp.com/) is not only a Spotlight replacement for opening applications or searching files. The major selling points are custom workflows accessible by quick typing. Picking HTML color codes, querying DNS records or copying emojis all over the place have become easier with quick shortcuts.\n\nTired of locking your screen on macOS? `Cmd+Space, l, Enter` after Alfred has learned that `l` means `lock`. Yep, it remembers the most often typed commands.\n\n![Alfred Workflow Dig GitLab.com IPv6](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/alfred_workflow_dig_gitlab.com_aaaa.png)\n\n\n## Trackpad and keyboard\n\nI always used to have a mouse with me for my previous notebooks, and the change to the trackpad always worried me. Move the mouse, click here and on it goes. When I got my first iPad, I got introduced to just tapping and approving.\nI’ve learned that this setting can be enabled on macOS too for the trackpad which is my preferred input method since then. In order to automate this setting, run the following CLI commands:\n\n```sh\ndefaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad Clicking -bool true\ndefaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior -int 1\ndefaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior -int 1\n```\n\nAnother thing I prefer using - the right click for accessing the actions toolbar. By default, the secondary click is available with two fingers. My improved workflow prefers the right bottom corner of the trackpad. You can either change this inside the trackpad preferences or run these CLI commands:\n\n```sh\ndefaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadCornerSecondaryClick -int 2\ndefaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad TrackpadRightClick -bool true\ndefaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.trackpad.trackpadCornerClickBehavior -int 1\ndefaults -currentHost write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.trackpad.enableSecondaryClick -bool true\n```\n\nLast but not least using `tab` for changing the focus area in windows is a must have. This is hidden in the keyboard shortcut settings as `use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls`.\n\n```sh\ndefaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3\n```\n\nAdditional ideas and commands can be found in [this repository](https://github.com/herrbischoff/awesome-macos-command-line).\n\n## Documentation\n\nEverything else is stored in the GitLab repository, including the documentation in Markdown format. Additional screenshots can be put there too into the `doc/images` directory for example.\nThere is no need to carry an extra wiki page around and everyone can access the repository via URL. You can also download the whole archive and work offline.\n\nThe best thing about my dotfiles repository - it is open source and we can learn, share, suggest together :-)\nDo you have a cool idea for making this even more convenient? 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Shadow Takeaways from Jacie","Recap of my experience in the CEO Shadow Program.",[708],"Jacie Bandur","2021-05-18","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\nHi! I’m Jacie Bandur. I completed GitLab’s CEO Shadow program from 2021-04-26 through 2021-05-07. It was a really enlightening experience. I generally work in Learning and Development and consider myself a lifelong learner. I can’t even explain how much I learned in such a short about of time. I learned a lot about the business. I learned a lot about the product. But learned even more about the importance of iteration in everything we do.\n\n### Qualifications to Participate\n\nI wanted to start this off with touching on qualifications to participate in the program.\n\nI am the type of person that has gone through most of my life thinking I’m not qualified for things. I’m not qualified for that job, that promotion, that program. The list goes on and on.\n\nWhen I saw the [CEO Shadow program](/blog/ceo-shadow-impressions-takeaways/) kick off in 2019, I really wanted to participate. I was a little intimidated. Who wouldn’t be, spending 2 weeks with the CEO of any company? But time passed and all the sudden it was 2021 and I had not taken any steps to participating in the program.\n\nIf you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you that you are qualified to participate in this program, I’m not big on giving “pep talks,” but here’s me telling you - You are qualified for this program. There’s never going to be a good or perfect time to do it. Tell your manager you want to do the CEO Shadow program. Stop waiting. Sign up today.\n\nNote: Take a look at the [eligibility](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/shadow/#eligibility) section of the CEO Shadow page for more information on signing up.\n\n### Pre-Program Tips\n\nThere are many things recommended for shadows to do pre-program outlined on the CEO Shadow handbook page. As I was going through the program there were things that I thought helped me (or would have helped me).\n\nHere are my top 6 recommendations:\n\n1. Make sure your team knows you will be unavailable for 2 weeks. This isn’t a program that can or should be done alongside your normal day to day work. I found catching up from the 2 weeks away kind of difficult because I was trying to keep up on what was going on and I had a bunch of half done things.\n1. Talk with people who have done the shadow program - schedule at least 3 coffee chats with CEO Shadow Alumni.\n1. Have food that is easy to eat quickly. Sid’s meetings are back to back most days, so you will have small amounts of time to eat throughout the day. Sid does eat during calls, which you are welcome to do, too, but if you are taking notes, it is difficult to eat. And this will make you realize why speedy meetings are so important!\n1. Listen to the [Executive Leadership LinkedIn Learning course](https://www.linkedin.com/learning/executive-leadership/).\n1. Be prepared to ask questions. When doing the program virtually, there isn’t a ton of time for asking questions, so when one would come up, I would add it to a note on my computer and ask if there was ever time with just the shadows and Sid.\n1. Take at least 1 day off after the program. Take even a couple of days off if you can! This is recommended on the handbook page, but I can’t stress this enough.\n\n\n### Takeaways\n\n**Group Conversations**\n\nI’ve been at GitLab for almost 4 years. When I joined, I made it a point to attend as many GC’s as I could. I had gotten out of the habit of attending Group Conversations. After attending them again for 2 weeks, I realized how important they are to understand better what is going on across the business. Everything in the organization is so intertwined. It’s helpful to understand what other teams are working on and succeeding in.\n\n**Feedback**\n\nWe should all be giving and receiving feedback often. We have a whole [handbook page on giving and receiving feedback](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/guidance-on-feedback/). Read the handbook page and watch the videos, as well. Practice giving feedback. I recommend using the [1-1 agenda](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/1-1/suggested-agenda-format/) Sid uses, because Feedback is an essential piece of that agenda, and it makes feedback more of a routine thing.\n\n**Biggest Takeaway**\n\nWe have an incredible team here at GitLab, from Engineering to Product to Sales to People and all the groups in between. There are so many great ideas. I observed the constant reinforcement by Sid to start with something small and build on it. You can ALWAYS make something more complex. It’s hard to go back to something more simple when you start with something complex.\n\nA couple of quotes that I heard from Sid during the program that reinforced this point:\n\n- “Every complex system evolves from a simple system that worked.”\n- “It’s very clear what is the simple solution. We can always make it more complicated as we go on.”\n\nI know they are very similar, but they happened in different meetings on different days, so the point was reinforced repeatedly.\n\nDuring the program, I reflected on the projects that I’am working on. How many of them am I trying to do too much on before releasing. Probably all of them. When I’m working on projects in the future, I will break them down into smaller, more doable chunks. Iteration is hard - it’s a skill to be practicing constantly.\n\n\n### Overall\n\nOverall, the program was really insightful and impactful. If you haven’t participated in it yet, I cannot encourage you enough to do so!\n",{"slug":712,"featured":12,"template":13},"ceo-shadow-recap",{"content":714,"config":726},{"title":715,"description":716,"authors":717,"heroImage":719,"date":720,"body":721,"category":9,"tags":722},"Why I love contributing to GitLab","Making small meaningful changes is what it's all about.",[718],"Austin Regnery","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679501/Blog/Hero%20Images/new-feature.png","2021-05-11","It was mid-morning on a Tuesday in February, and I had 10 minutes in between meetings. So I decided to try and solve a pain point of mine.\nYou see, I had to memorize this HTML snippet to create a collapsible section in GitLab Issue descriptions and comments, but I kept forgetting it. Was it `summary` or `section`? I could never remember.\n```html\n\u003Cdetails>\n\u003Csummary>Insert Title\u003C/summary>\nHidden content\n\u003C/details>\n```\nEven though it is not vanilla Markdown, GitLab knows how to interpret some HTML. I used this formatting trick fairly often since full-page screenshots can occupy a lot of screen space, which leads to excessive scrolling.\nSo I decided to poke around our codebase to see how the other Markdown shortcuts worked. To my surprise, it was pretty straightforward. Each shortcut had a simple text input that mapped to each button. This implementation was simple to replicate since I just needed to copy/paste and replace a few words.\n![Image of Vue and Haml files with editor shortcuts](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/vue-haml.png){: .shadow}\nThe Vue and Haml files with the new shortcut\n\nI started a branch and began hacking away at the code. Now, I would never call myself a Software Engineer, but I like to try and make things from time to time. I was able to add a new shortcut to the toolbar to insert this code snippet for me in less than 10 minutes. No more memorizing! Making contributions like this is what makes working at GitLab so special.\nNow, it wasn't ready for production, but I at least had something that worked. I shared it with my UX colleagues in Slack, and it started to gain traction with several up-votes and few constructive comments on how to make it better.\nWith the functionality flushed out, a few other designers helped me get a better icon added to our SVG library. Using clear iconography is critical for communicating information more clearly.\n| Initial Icon | Final Icon |\n| - | - |\n| ![SVG of chevron right icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/chevron-right.svg) | ![SVG of details block icon](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/details-block.svg) |\n\nThe last thing to do was resolve my failing tests, and I had several teammates help me do that.\n![Gif of the shortcut being used](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/demo.gif)\n\nToday [this change](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/54938) merged! Now I solved a pain point for me and others. It took a few months to go from idea to production, but the effort was super low. I'd say the return on my initial investment, 10 minutes, is super high.\n> Having a direct impact on a product was never an option for me before joining GitLab.\n\n![Image of participants in the Merge Request](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab/participants.png)\n\n\nThank you to everyone that helped me deploy this\n",[723,724,725],"UX","product","AWS",{"slug":727,"featured":12,"template":13},"why-i-love-contributing-to-gitlab",{"content":729,"config":740},{"title":730,"description":731,"authors":732,"heroImage":734,"date":720,"body":735,"category":9,"tags":736},"Placebo Lines on the Pipeline Graph","Have you noticed the connecting lines missing on your pipelines lately? Here's why",[733],"Sam Beckham","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749679507/Blog/Hero%20Images/ci-cd.png","\n\n{::options parse_block_html=\"true\" /}\n\n\n\nHave you ever pressed the close door button on the elevator, in the hope that you'll save a few precious seconds?\nOr got frustrated at the person stood next to you at the cross-walk, neglecting to press the button?\nWell, maybe they know something you don't, or perhaps you know this already.\nMany buttons in our society lie to us.\n[David McRaney](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/) dubbed these, \"Placebo buttons\" and they're everywhere.\nThose elevator doors won't close any faster and the cross-walk button has no effect on the lights.\nThe only lights they control are the lights on the buttons themselves.\nThey give you the feedback you crave, but that's all they're doing.\n\nThese placebos aren't constrained to the physical world, they're prevalent in [UI design](/blog/the-evolution-of-ux-at-gitlab/) too.\nFrom literal placebo buttons like [YouTube's downvote](https://www.quora.com/Does-downvoting-a-comment-on-YouTube-even-do-anything), to more subtle effects like Instagram always [pretending to work](https://www.fastcompany.com/1669788/the-3-white-lies-behind-instagrams-lightning-speed), or progress bars that have a [fixed animation](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/why-some-apps-use-fake-progress-bars/517233/).\nThey're everywhere if you know where to look.\n\nAt GitLab, we created a placebo of our own in one of our core features; the pipeline graph.\n\nThose of you who have used our pipeline graph, will be familiar with its appearance.\nThere's a series of jobs, grouped by stages, connected by a series of lines depicting the relationships between the jobs.\nBut these lines might be lying to you.\nThese lines are indiscriminately drawn between each job in a stage, regardless of their relationship.\nThese lines are placebos.\n\n![The old pipeline rendering with lines connecting every job in a stage](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_old-graph.png)\n\nThis wasn't a problem to begin with.\nA basic pipeline has several jobs across a handful of stages.\nJobs in each stage would run parallel to each other, but each stage would run sequentially.\nIn the image shown above, all the jobs in the test stage would trigger at the same time. Once those jobs had finished, all the jobs in the build stage would trigger.\nWe used rudimentary CSS to draw lines connecting each job in one stage to each job in the next.\nThese lines weren't calculated based on their connections, but still reflected the story they were telling.\n\nSince the introduction of `needs` relationships in [v12.2](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/47063), pipelines got a bit more complicated.\nNow you could configure a job in a later stage to trigger as soon as a job in an earlier stage completed.\nLooking at our old example, we could set the API deployment to run as soon as our spec tests passed.\nThis skips the remaining tests and the entire build stage, turning our lines into pretty little liars.\n\nWe had many internal discussions about these lines, and how to show the relationships between jobs.\nThere's the [`needs` visualization](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/directed_acyclic_graph/#needs-visualization), which does an excellent job of displaying these relationships, but the main pipeline graph was still inaccurate.\nFor the past few months, we've been [refactoring the pipeline graph](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/276949), giving it a new lease of life and fixing some of its issues along the way.\nOne of those issues were the faked lines.\nIn the new version, we can accurately draw lines between jobs.\nLines that actually depict the relationships jobs have with each other.\nNow the lines no-longer lie!\n\n![The newer pipeline graph showing the correct needs links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_new-graph.png)\n\nThe above image shows an unreleased version of the pipeline graph.\nYou can see the lines drawn between the jobs to show that the `deploy:API` job can start as soon as the `rspec` job is successful.\nSomething the old lines (shown earlier in this post) would have been unable to depict.\n\nOne unfortunate downside of this is that these lines can be quite expensive to calculate.\nThey're actual DOM nodes, drawn deliberately and placed precisely.\nOn smaller graphs this isn't a problem, but some of our initial tests have found pipelines with a potential 8000+ job connections.\nThat kind of calculation would grind the browser to a halt, and nobody wants that.\n\nAt GitLab, we believe in boring solutions.\nWe make the simple change that sets us on the path towards where we want to be.\nShip it, get feedback, and iterate.\nSo that's what we did.\nIn the first phase of this rollout, we shipped the new pipeline graph with no lines connecting the jobs.\nWe don't have to worry about the expensive calculations, and we still get to roll out the refactored pipeline graph.\n\n![The current (v13.11) pipeline graph showing no links between jobs](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/placebo-lines_current-graph.png)\n\nWe know some of you will miss them, but fear not.\nBoring solutions are just technical debt if you don't iterate on them.\nSo the [improved lines are coming](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/4509) in a future release, along with several other improvements to the pipeline graph.\nWe're already starting to roll out the new [Job Dependencies](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/298973) view which shows the jobs in a (much closer to) execution order.\nStay tuned for more updates, and watch [Sarah Groff Hennigh Palermo's talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2EKqKjB7OQ) for the technical side of this effort and a deeper dive into some of the decisions we made.\n",[737,738,24,739],"CI","frontend","design",{"slug":741,"featured":12,"template":13},"placebo-lines-on-the-pipeline-graph",{"promotions":743},[744,758,769],{"id":745,"categories":746,"header":748,"text":749,"button":750,"image":755},"ai-modernization",[747],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":751,"config":752},"Get your AI maturity 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